A melancholic
song is playing in the background. It seeps into the aural sense. It affects
but surprisingly I don’t want it to end. And it doesn’t; it goes on.
What is war?
A conflict carried on by force of arms between nations or between parties
within a nation. Force there is, arms there are – fire from the skies, fear
there is, and war there is. And then there are other conflicts, within; there
are wars in the head, in relationships; a sense of betrayal, there is hatred
dripping, there is a tacit shelling of unspoken words, of feelings.
‘There is no invasion as
fearful as love, no havoc like desire. Its fuse trembles in the human heart and
runs through to the core of the world. What are our defences to it?’
It’s World
War II, Germany is planning to invade Britain. George Beaumont is a bank
manager but the war has voluntarily turned him into Superintendent of the infirmary.
Evelyn is his wife, happy with him and their son Phillip. The war has bought a
tremble in her life like everyone else’s. George’s decision to take up an
assignment away from them, for the country, has imbibed a sense of betrayal in
her that she can’t free herself of.
A feeling of
abandonment engulfs her; George hasn’t left yet but the thought of him being
able to leave them; her and her son, is killing her, is straining their
normalcy. And the green pills of death lying there below the spade in their
garden, kept by him, is an evidence of his torture; a death before dying.
When
relationships have been lived long and though the strands are strong, there is
an inevitable abrasion due to circumstances. That is when the transparency
turns to translucency, a slightly opaque layer shrouds and suddenly it becomes
unimportant to reveal things. You ask and answer for yourself, ‘what difference
will it make?’ – the first signs of a strain.
‘She had to look away.
Sometimes, it was still an effort: to hate him so she would not love him. He’d
always been such a good father.’
Otto
Gottlieb, a prisoner of war, a Jew, an artist, finds himself in Geoffrey’s
infirmary. But he’d been disowned even before he reached the infirmary, by the
Germans. He’s an outcast; do we not know why.
Evelyn has
decided to read at the infirmary to the prisoners; there are only two; the
dying Italian and Otto. What starts as an indifference towards the confined Jew,
unknowingly develops into love - time, situation, betrayal and most
importantly, an imposed loneliness in the head play their roles. Can one
infidelity justify another?
‘Life would hobble on.
Indeed, perhaps it was only by accepting the inevitable failures of intimacy
that one’s married life moved forward and passed into the muted successes upon
which anniversary parties, retirement dinners and obituaries ultimately
depended.’
According to
the biblical narrative, Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, was summoned by King David,
who had seen her bathing and lusted after her. David had Uriah himself carry
the message to be placed on the front lines of the battle that led to his
death.
This
disturbing piece of Bathsheba’s story has an apparent influence on ‘Unexploded’s’
central theme, both literally and otherwise. As the story unfolds, the writer
unveils the characters to the yearning reader as they wince and gasp in anticipation.
‘Yes’, he (Otto) told
the young critic, ‘I think that is fair to say. One is always, also, painting
oneself. It’s inevitable, though one’s focus is necessarily trained upon the
subject. I suppose all of life, whether off the canvas or on it, is made from’
– he’d allowed himself to smile carelessly for the first time that opening
night – ‘the intercourse of two things.’
Through Ms.
Macleod’s chisel arises another grotesque effigy of hatred which represents the
thoughts of children in war; their perspective. A nation is probably already
dead when its children fall prey to hatred, when their minds are polluted, when
their innocence is no more the innocence of harmless sport but becomes a criminalized
innocence; the innocence remains but is veneered in pure hatred.
What is more
disturbing - the everyday anticipation of war or the war itself? Which is more
tiring?
‘She wanted life, she
wanted it badly. She needed the world to burst open. To go up in smoke. She
wanted the enemy to invade the shore and be done with it. Fear was exhausting,
but nothing tired a body like hope.’
‘Then, as if in reply to some reckless act of
the collective will or an unspeakable communal wish, something in the
atmosphere gave way that July night. Squalls and showers blew in from the west.
The lid of summer came off. And in a moment that was, after so many months of
waiting, as much longed for (secretly, ashamedly) as it was dreaded, the first
bomb was tipped into the early morning of the new day: a fifty-kilogram falling
star, gravid, lethal and indifferent.'
When you see
a plane firing bullets in the distance, a character says in one of the
paragraphs, never run away from it; run towards it if you want a chance to
survive. And run towards disaster is what every character in this story does
but does anyone survive?
It’s a well
crafted, intelligently written story; I loved the simplicity of the narrative.
It struck a chord and it’ll stay with me for a long time. The melancholic tune
still resonates as Evelyn visits Otto’s representation of Bathsheba in his
painting on the church dome.
And as a tear
finally falls, I am there to witness it.
My rating - 8/10
Picture
courtesy:
Alison
Macleod - https://www.penguin.co.nz/authors/alison-macleod
‘Unexploded’
book cover - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18212386-unexploded
